Generating a string of random numbers is easy. The hard part is proving that they’re random. As Dilbert creator Scott Adams once pointed out, “that’s the problem with randomness: you can ...

Most random numbers produced by computers aren't random in the strictest sense. Computers use an algorithm to generate random numbers based on an initial starting place, a seed number.

There are a great variety of ways to build a random number generator, and similarly many ways to generate numbers that appear random, but in a pure mathematical sense generally aren’t. [Danie… ...

Computers can generate pseudorandom numbers, but anyone who cracks the algorithm can also guess its output. Even monkeys banging on keyboards would create guessable sequences based on their finger ...

The algorithms behind those generate sequences of numbers that have the statistical properties of randomness. But this is not the same as the real thing.

Algorithms in conventional computers can produce sequences of numbers that seem random at first, but over time these tend to display patterns. This makes them at least partially predictable, and ...

There are currently two main methods for generating random numbers. In the first, a computer picks numbers according to an algorithm or from a pre-generated list. This method, while fast and not ...

"It's actually impossible for a computer, following a predefined algorithm, to generate a truly random number," says Bruno Sanguinetti, as physicist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland.